Marketing is essential to the success of any business, but it is important for startups in the early stages of their establishment to focus on the quality of products and their suitability to the needs of the market before spending large sums in marketing operations.
In a report published by the American “Forbes” magazine, writer Abdou Riani says that the startup needs, above all, to develop products that customers need, and then focus on marketing.
Imagine that you have just developed two new products, and the first product has shown promising indications through interviews with customers, but you do not have a budget to market it, on the other hand, the second product has not shown any signs of success in the market even though it has a large marketing budget, so what is the product that can be You bet on him in this case?
Most of the experienced are betting on the first product, because marketing cannot save the second product if it has no place in the market.
Marketing investment is a growth factor, but the real driver is the right product for the market, and if you do not have such a product, then you basically do not have what can be developed, so trying to market any product that does not fit the market requirements is a desperate attempt to build a house without foundations.
In fact, investing in marketing early in the startup’s life cycle is an expansionary tool that is not too soon, and is one of the biggest barriers for startups, according to the Startup Genome research and advisory center.
A startup needs above all to develop products that customers need and then focus on marketing (Shutterstock).
Video spreading
One of the largest technology companies in the world currently, "Dropbox", was able to achieve growth at an early stage of its establishment without much marketing investment, and the first version of Dropbox was appropriate to the market requirements, and the founding team noted that it is growing well thanks to a simple explanatory video on the Internet.
As the video went viral, they created a referral program to motivate users to provide feedback on the product, and the service has grown by 3,900% in 15 months.
Currently, Dropbox spends more than $ 80 million annually on ads, which is consistent with the size of its revenues, but this was not necessary in the early days of the company when it was able to grow rapidly only through a video clip on the network.
Sigment experience
The Segment platform experience is a good example of the importance of product fit to market, and the founding team raised nearly $ 600,000 after participating in Y Combinator's startup accelerator in 2011, but after more than a year of working on it. Two different products, the team spent most of the capital but had nothing of value to bring to the market.
Then, the team decided to test a product that they had developed when creating the platform, which is an easy-to-use data library, and presented the idea on the Hacker News site. The product attracted users ’interest within a few days, and achieved a reach that the platform could not achieve. By spending more than half a million dollars on prior ideas.